Archive for March 2013

It is every testosterone-splattered man’s dream to feature in the news as a have-a-go-hero who uses just one hand to floor attacker after attacker in a vicious street attack and escape unscathed. The dream came true for one pub landlord from Wisbech, in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, only to then come crashing down when it turned out the whole thing was a massive humongous fib.

LIAR: The pub landlord who conned the world into believing he single-handedly fought off four muggers

A PUB landlord has admitted to police he lied about fighting off four attackers outside a Wisbech fish and chip shop.

The alleged attack – which made international news after John Wood, 37, first told his story to the Wisbech Standard – never happened.

The ‘heroic’ derring-do pub landlord from the Marshland Arms has even been forced to cough up an £80 fixed penalty notice for wasting police time.

Proudly posing when the story broke

How Wood received his wounds – seen by our reporter and photographer – is not known but police are assured he did NOT get them from fielding off attackers.

Wood had alleged that four men cornered him in an alleyway off Lynn Road, Wisbech, as he emerged from Frank’s Fish & Chip Shop. But, despite suffering a stab wound which he claimed required 18 stitches, the 37-year-old alleged he floored all four of his attackers – and left with his dinner intact.

Wood claimed he had trained in martial arts as a teenager and said the men “stopped me and demanded my phone and wallet. I told them if they wanted it, come and get it.

“They all came at me at once. I kicked two of them in the leg. I used to do a little bit of aikido and I remembered to go for the knees. They fell to the floor and couldn’t get up.

“As I did that another clipped me in the face. I turned around and hit him and he fell.”

He then went into detail about the attacked and claimed “I didn’t even drop the chips. “It was all done one-handed. They weren’t even squashed when I got home!”

So impressive. Such a shame then that when the chips were down, the landlord’s story didn’t add up and he had to face this humiliation in the local paper, throwing the holy sacrament of ‘news’ into total disarray.

You’d think that would be the end of the matter, but no: the landlord came back for more and the Wisbech Standard published a follow-up story with yet more comments from him in which he desperately maintains his innocence.

SHAMED pub landlord John Wood insisted today he did fight off four attackers and only accepted an £80 fine for wasting police time “to get them off my back”.

Faced with being branded by police as a liar, the 37 year-old landlord of the Marshland Arms remains adamant he was attacked outside Franks’ fish and chip shop.

“The reason I accepted a fine for wasting police time was because I wanted the whole thing finished,” he told me.

The evidence

Two detectives quizzed him, he said, and explained they had examined CCTV in the area and would find no footage of the alleged attack.

“They asked if I had caused the injuries to myself- asked if my fiancée had done it or had the kids done it by accident,” he said.

Mr Wood said: “It was the most bizarre moment of my life being interviewed by people who didn’t believe me. Where did they think the injuries came from for goodness sake?

“I was told due to them actually spending time on the case I would have to a pay a fine. I said anything just to get this bloody matter finished. So they wrote up a statement, I signed it and left thinking that was over.

“Now these lies are being bandied about.”

A police spokesman said: “Officers began to investigate the allegations but soon realised his version of events did not add up.

“The 37 year old admitted he lied when he was interviewed yesterday.”

A real Wisbech whodunnit. I just don’t know what or who to believe any more.

Like this:

Question: What do you do in that moment of blind panic when your 12-year-old son stumbles upon the secret world of vice and illegality you thought was well hidden on the family computer?

Options: (a) confess all, (b) slip your son a fiver to keep quiet, or (c) report it to the police, write to the Home Secretary, and parade you and your son in the pages of the local paper with Gazette Faces in order to prove it’s got nothing to do with your own online browsing habits.

‘Dark web’ warning to parents as Cleethorpes boy stumbles on grim internet world

A 12-YEAR-old boy from Cleethorpes stumbled across an internet underworld selling guns and sex with underage girls while looking for games online.

His appalled father now wants to spread the word to other parents and has even written to the Home Secretary about it.

Robert Palmer, 53, of Arundel Place, Cleethorpes, was horrified when his son Morgan, who suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), told him what he had unearthed.

The computer whiz had found an ominous tutorial, explaining how to download a different web server, which he did, that unveiled the whole section of the internet not available to normal users.

Services advertised on the dark web include guns, contract killers, drugs, credit card skimmers, sex, child and animal pornography and identities for sale, which can be bought using an online currency called Bitcoins.

Sounds like a whole Narnia of sin. Not one to be selfish, the concerned moral crusader was keen to share news of this ‘whole section of the internet not available to normal users’ with other parents.

Mr Palmer said: “There is nothing you can’t get on there and some of it is pretty grim, so I think that other parents should know about it.

“Young people could get hold of drugs without even meeting a drug dealer, which is worrying. Morgan is sensible and luckily he told me.

Mr Palmer, who writes computer programmes himself, contacted Humberside Police but was told nothing could be done – although they have offered advice to parents and assured them that calls will be taken seriously.

Frustrated, he has written to Home Secretary Theresa May about the dark web, urging her to take action to protect the public from such blatant illegality.

Morgan, a gifted pupil at Cleethorpes Academy, said: “This is the mother-load of criminal websites – some of the things on there are appalling. I knew what it was straight away so I went to get my dad.”

It’s a bit out of order for little Morgan to drag his mother into this sordid episode.